Henrike “Kiki” Schmalfuss is an MD candidate at Harvard Medical School. She is passionate about disability advocacy and disability health justice. She graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University in 2022 with a BS in Global Health and a minor in Disability Studies. She received the Lena Landegger Community Service Award for her commitment to disability justice, including serving as a founder of the Georgetown Disability Alliance (GDA) club.

Using her advocacy and community-organizing experience from piloting Deloitte’s first-ever disability mentorship program through GDA, Kiki has continued to build disability community and breakdown barriers to entry into the medical field for future physicians with disabilities in her role as Individual Advocacy Director of HMS Student Alliance for Chronic Illness, Health Conditions, and Disabilities (HACHD). In this role, Kiki and her team have been selected as a 2024-2025 Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund grant recipient to launch a cross-school mentorship program for faculty, medical students, and pre-medical students with disabilities to build supportive relationships to confront ableism and reach their career goals. In her new role as the Vice Director for Advocacy at the national organization Medical Students with Disability and Chronic Illness (MSDCI), Kiki is eager to advocate for robust disability training in medical education and for increased support for and inclusion of medical students and physicians with disabilities on a national level.

As a disability advocate and future physician, Kiki aspires to work at the nexus of medicine and public health to improve disability health equity, increase the accessibility of medical care, and reduce disability stigma in the medical space and beyond. She hopes to transform the disability health space by utilizing clinical care, research, and public health policy as a practicing physician. Her goal is to uplift and empower other disabled voices to ensure the disabled community is leading changes in practice and policy.

Kiki grew up in Gainesville, Florida as a first-generation American and spent every summer with her family in Germany. She enjoys spending time with her loved ones, meeting new people, cooking new recipes, and enjoying the outdoors. Even though her grandparents live in Germany, she FaceTimes them regularly to make traditional German food recipes and craft crochet projects together.